Chapter 1: Another World Line

William Carter rubbed his eyes, looking at the painting in front of him in disbelief.

The image depicted a vast mechanical army—steel soldiers, tanks, bombers... This was an emotionless torrent of steel, reminding William Carter of scenes from "Terminator."

At the edge of the painting was a city turned to ruins, with chaos and explosions still raging within.

This was a highly skilled piece of art, but precisely because of that, it conveyed a sense of despair to the viewer, lingering long after.

However, at the very center of the painting, facing the torrent of the mechanical army, there was a blank space, with only the outline of a human figure sketched in.

Clearly, this was meant to be the back of a person—the true protagonist of the painting—standing alone against the seemingly unstoppable mechanical legion.

"I should be in a hospital bed, shouldn't I? And I don't remember ever painting this!"

William Carter was completely baffled. Not only was this painting unfamiliar, but the surroundings were also strange!

He realized he was no longer in a hospital room, but in a cramped studio apartment—a tiny place!

And the furnishings in the room were things he had never seen before: an ultra-thin LCD TV covering an entire wall, minimalist foldable furniture, and the high-tech drawing tablet in front of him...

Everything was completely unfamiliar to William Carter!

The last thing William Carter could remember was lying in a hospital bed, feeling exhausted and sleepy after finishing a painting, closing his eyes to rest for a while, and then waking up to find everything had changed!

"Could it be... that I'm already dead?"

At that moment, a flood of memories suddenly surged into his mind. William Carter instantly recalled many things—memories that originally did not belong to him!

Looking at the painting again, it no longer felt unfamiliar, and the surroundings were no longer strange!

...

This could be considered a parallel world, quite similar to the one William Carter lived in before, but the biggest difference was in technology.

This world had experienced three world wars. During the third war, technology advanced explosively, with countries rapidly deploying artificial intelligence and mechanical armies to strengthen their forces.

But one day, the AI crisis suddenly broke out. What had originally been wars between nations ultimately evolved into a war between humans and machines.

This war dragged on for decades. During this long period, battles raged constantly, the population plummeted, prosperous cities became ruins, and humanity faced the threat of extinction.

Fortunately, humans ultimately survived, completely wiped out the AI armies, and began rebuilding on the ruins.

It has been 15 years since that war ended.

During the AI war, the old nations were completely destroyed. After the war, the human resistance formed a united government, redivided the world into 16 regions, and the survivors began to repopulate, leading human society back to prosperity.

In this parallel world, William Carter is 20 years old, born at the end of the war. His parents died in the conflict, and due to a childhood of displacement and hunger, his health had always been poor. Although he tried to recover later, the underlying issues were never fully resolved, and after days of intense labor, he died suddenly.

Before this, he had planned to finish this painting and apply for a job at a cultural entertainment company.

These memories must have originally belonged to this body, so William Carter quickly recalled them.

"What does this mean? Does it mean I've transmigrated?"

"And my body... my cancer, it's all gone?"

Only now did William Carter notice his body—very young, not exactly healthy, but merely weak, without the terminal illness of his previous life!

William Carter excitedly stood up and moved his body around.

Although this body was frail, it was still healthy!

He excitedly went to the narrow window and looked outside, seeing a cityscape he had never seen before.

Unbelievable prosperity.

More memories about this world flooded into his mind.

Although the great war had turned the world into ruins, humanity's technological level remained. Reconstruction progressed rapidly, and in just 15 years, many major cities had regained their pre-war prosperity, even surpassing it.

Of course, in many remote areas, desolate ruins still reminded people of the war's many past events.

All industries were developing rapidly, especially the cultural and entertainment sectors.

The long war had not only completely halted the development of culture and entertainment, but even destroyed much of the existing cultural achievements. Many artworks and relics were destroyed, and massive amounts of data stored in the cloud were erased by AI hostile to humanity.

Some scholars even pessimistically said: humanity's artistic level has regressed by at least a hundred years, and those broken lines of heritage may never be restored!